Hi!
This is my first post.
I love you guys! This website is a godsend, you’re all so lovely and friendly.
I started Keto last year and ended up gaining weight.
I see what I did wrong now, and have been back on for 3 days. I have lost 1.8kg so far, probably water weight, but I haven’t been able to do that on any regular diet.
I know that Keto is for me, I have been researching for months and slowly increasing my knowledge.
Anyways, to my point;
When I started last year I bought a blood glucose meter, even though I am not diabetic. Mostly because I did not research properly and because I was in a rush to ‘start’.
Should I buy a ketone meter?
What can my glucose monitor really tell me if I am not even a diabetic?
Can I tell if I am in ketosis by reading the glucose meter (that might be a really daft question, lol)
Can anyone please help?
Blood Ketone VS Blood Glucose
I would say no,
You can monitor ketosis via glucometer but indirectly.
Pee sticks work but they are not of much use past knowing you are making excess ketones.
You could use a cheap breath meter if you want to, they are like 10 on amazon. Again its moslty a novelty.
You really don’t need to monitor the ketone levels, you need to monitor carb intake, if that is low that you will be in ketosis in short order, and already are based on your results.
I would add,
I would only recommend it if you are diabetic or insulin resistant(IR), but since you did not own a glucometer before I doubt you are.
Thanks for your quick response!
I may hold off on purchasing anything additional.
I am already feeling mental clarity and suppressed hunger (i am usually starving by lunch time). Though I may test my glucose just for shits and giggles.
Well the best advice i can give you is eat when you are hungry, do not restrict calories, and try and eat to your macros for the first few weeks. If you are still hungry eat more fat. I like to tell people to eat until you are full, as you progress you will understand satiety which is different to full. The biggest mistake I made in keto adaption was to cut calories in the form of fat, use maintain on your calculator. After fat adaption which is about 2 months down the road you can start to cut, fast and in general really feel awesome, right now is the time to get everything working correctly.
The glucometer is really helpful.
Test in the morning before eating to get an idea of fasting blood glucose. If that is low and stable over time, that is good news.
You can also use it to test your own personal blood glucose response to eating any food.
I did tests with dairy, eggs, salads, different fruits where: a blood glucose test is taken for baseline, then consume the test food or drink, test every 15 minutes for the first hour, then every half hour in the second hour, or until blood glucose drops back to a normal level (similar to the start number). This is known as doing a blood glucose curve.
If the blood glucose goes way high in response to a food, or the blood glucose takes a long time to normalise, then that food is not suited to your metabolism.
It will help you customise your way of eating.
As a general observation blood glucose tends to be low, or low normal range when in nutritional ketosis. So if your fasted blood glucose is at the upper end of a normal range, or high, it would be unlikely that you would be in nutritional ketosis,
Two questions are you IR or T2D
and how much of a daily swing do you normally see just curious.
I don’t know what IR means but I am not Diabetic
And to be honest I haven’t used it for so long I can’t remember.
I will try testing tomorrow morning just to see what result I get.
I am keeping to my macros and not worrying about calories.
IR= insulin resistant and the question was actual for @FrankoBear
for the most part calories IMHO don’t count but when you are way under your BMR level which you most likely are you will suffer, since you are asking for more energy I am telling how to get there. If you are well below your BMR (basal metabolic rate) your body will go into conservation mode and not use the stores of fat for lower level body functions. This is one of the many reason we say eat to your macro level, but often I have seen people who have really off levels. I can pick and choose the lowest macro level and say I am eating my macros but if you are way off in the first place there is not much point. If you are worried about gaining weight I can tell that is not much of worry, could it happen sure, but not over time, esp if you do this WOE(way of eating) right. I am only trying to help you not make the same mistakes I made early on.
Hi Chris. I was insulin resistant. Day-to-day fasting blood glucose is 5.4mmol/L +/- 0.4mmol/L in the blood glucose curves it was rare to go above 7.0 mmol/L at about 1hr after a meal and I was back to normal by 90min to 2 hours. That might indicate insulin sensitivity has been recovered. When I am focussed and careful with ketogenic eating my blood glucose is often 4.2 to 4.5 mmol/L.
Welcome here and welcome back to keto. Don’t worry about chasing keto numbers. If you eat 20g or under of net carbs a day, you are in ketosis. You glucometer can be used like mentioned above to see of you react differently to a food than you’d expect. Like stevia for example, diet soda, cheese, etc. Your blood sugar might not go up with the diet soda or stevia (they don’t raise blood sugar normally) but it might suddenly dip because of an insulin response which we don’t want. Or, it might have no changes.
Actually, I think this is a good question. I had the same question when I started.
I would say that if your fasting blood glucose is less than 80 mg/dL, then you’re probably in ketosis.
However, when I test - and I test a lot - I rarely see my blood glucose going that low. E.g. just recently, I saw a blood glucose value of 101 (which was a low for the day) with blood ketones at 2.9, a high for the day. So I’m definitely in ketosis with a blood glucose reading over 100.
Based on that experience, my opinion is that you need a ketone meter if you want to definitely know that you’re in ketosis.